At a glance
Pacing check. Period-to-date Meta spend as a percentage of the configured period budget. Fires the alert when spend hits 90% before 80% of the period has elapsed (i.e. you’re burning budget faster than the calendar).
Calculation
Calculated automatically from your Meta Ads (Facebook) data. See the At a glance summary above for what the metric tracks and the worked example below for a typical reading.Worked example
A UK fashion brand. Configured Meta budget for Apr 26: £24,000. Today is 21 Apr 26 (day 21 of 30, so 70% of the period elapsed).
What happened, on the data:
- A creative refresh on day 14 (Manuela’s “Spring Looks” batch) lifted CTR from 0.9% to 1.8%. Meta’s optimiser responded by increasing delivery, the Advantage+ Shopping campaign cleared its daily cap on day 15-19. ROAS held at 3.6×, so the lift was real, not just inflation. The spend shape is healthy in isolation; the issue is calendar.
- At today’s pace, the £24k budget will be exhausted by day 23 (24 Apr 26). That leaves 7 days of the month with no Meta spend, unless someone tops up the budget. Two options: top up by ~£8k (run to 30 Apr at current pace) OR throttle daily caps from £1,200 to £400 to spread the remaining £1,900 over 9 days.
- Underlying reason this fired: the merchant didn’t update the budget after lifting daily caps on the cold Advantage+ campaign on day 13. The configured period budget in Vortex IQ is a soft target; Meta’s actual delivery follows daily/lifetime budgets configured in Ads Manager. The two need to stay in sync.
- The cleanest action: top up Vortex IQ budget to £32k, accept the higher spend pace, monitor ROAS for the rest of the month. If ROAS holds, you’ve found your scaling ceiling. If ROAS drops more than 10%, you’ve over-shot the efficient frontier and should pull back via campaign-level caps next month.
- Day 30 reading expectation: spend lands around £31, 33k against £24k configured budget = 130% pacing. The budget alert will keep firing daily until the budget config is updated. Update the budget config in Vortex IQ to match the new spend plan, otherwise daily noise drowns the actual issue.
Sibling cards merchants should reference together
Reconciling against the vendor’s own dashboard
Where to look in Meta Ads Manager: Meta does NOT have a single “account budget vs spend” view. The closest views are:- Meta Ads Manager → Campaigns → “Budget” + “Amount Spent” columns: shows per-campaign budget and per-campaign spend. Sum these manually for an account-level pacing check.
- Meta Ads Manager → Account Overview → Recent Activity: shows daily spend for the account; useful for spotting the spike day.
- Billing → Limits: account-level spend limit (a hard cap, not a budget). If you’ve set a Spend Limit, Meta will pause delivery when it hits.
Cross-connector reconciliation:
Known limitations / merchant FAQs
Why doesn’t this card use Meta’s own budget setting? Meta budgets are per-campaign or per-adset (CBO / ABO), not per-account. There is no single “account budget” field in the Meta Marketing API. Vortex IQ asks you to configure a planning-level period budget separately. Keep them in sync: when you raise daily caps in Ads Manager, also bump the Vortex IQ budget; otherwise pacing alerts misfire. Does iOS 14.5 affect this card? No. This card is on spend, not on conversions or revenue. ATT, modeled conversions, CAPI, none of them touch spend pacing. Pacing is the most reliable card on Meta: it tells you exactly what’s being billed, regardless of attribution noise. Why did this card fire on a day my campaigns “felt normal”? Three common causes:- A daily cap was raised earlier in the period and forgotten. Meta’s optimiser respects the cap; if you raised one campaign from £200/day to £600/day on day 7, the pacing breach is invisible until you check the cumulative number.
- Advantage+ Shopping cleared its daily cap because of a CTR lift. When CTR rises, Meta raises delivery to capture the demand. If your daily cap was the binding constraint, spend jumps.
- A new campaign was launched mid-period and adds to the burn. You configured the period budget for 5 campaigns; a 6th was launched on day 12; the budget config didn’t get updated.
- Frequency cap biting. If you’ve set a per-user frequency cap, Meta pauses delivery to high-frequency users. Spend pacing reads under-budget while CPM and impressions look normal on the rest of the audience. Solution: raise or remove the cap, or expand audience.
- Learning phase exit failure. Adsets that fail to exit the learning phase (under 50 conversions in 7 days) get throttled by Meta. Pacing reads under-budget. Solution: consolidate adsets or raise daily cap.
>90% used before 80% of period catches early breaches but ignores 80, 90% pacing which may also matter. Some merchants raise it to >85% used before 75% for tighter discipline; others lower to >95% used before 85% for looser flow.
Why does pacing alert on day 28 of 30 when I’m already winding down?
The 80%-elapsed threshold is hit on day 24. Day 28 is 93% elapsed, well past the alert window. If the alert is firing on day 28, today’s spend is breaching 100% of budget with 2 days still to go. Action: pause campaigns or top up budget.